Service Design YAP
Service Design YAP is a community podcast from Service Design Network UK's chapter.
Each episode profiles a member of the design community, exploring the lessons they've learned on their career path and the hearing their favourite design war stories.
Why did we set up YAP?
Well, many designers work in isolation and find it difficult to attend physical community meets ups. The podcast provides a way for everyone to tap into the community, to learn a little about craft and careers and to feel a part of something bigger.
Why is the podcast called YAP?
Well thats for us to know and you to guess.
We hope that these episodes inform, inspire and entertain you in equal measure.
If you have a suggestion for great guest the drop us a line. There's a "Send us a Text" link in every episode.
Service Design YAP
Redesigning prison education by fostering trust (and founding a record label), with Judah Armani
Judah takes us through the importance of moving beyond quick-fix methods, explaining how a balance between data-driven design and visionary insights can lead to transformative ideas that resonate deeply with communities.
Judah's two decades of experience reveal the necessity of being open to personal change before facilitating broader societal transformations.
We dive into the nuances of designing conversations that foster genuine collaboration and trust, stressing that these processes can't be rushed. From building trust within historically let-down communities to creating authentic, impactful solutions, Judah's insights illuminate the critical role of empathetic engagement in driving sustained social change.
But the conversation doesn't stop there. We also explore In House Records, an innovative approach to prison education, where music becomes a powerful tool for learning and rehabilitation. Judah introduces the concept of a record label as a dynamic learning environment, merging numeracy, literacy, and business skills in captivating ways. This chapter not only showcases the enthusiastic response from inmates but also critically examines the limitations of traditional education models. Through compelling narratives and personal anecdotes, we uncover the transformative potential of aligning educational methods with individual interests, ultimately paving the way for reduced re-offending rates and successful rehabilitation.
Judah's book, Society Driven Design was published in May and is available from small independent bookshops (and the big, corporate ones too).
About Judah:
Judah Armani is an educator, frequent maker and occasional writer.He is a partner at The Royal College of Art where he heads up the Social Impact Studio within the Service Design M.A. programme. He is an visitong professor of Service Design at the Musashino Art College in Tokyo, Japan, and a visiting fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design’s strategic studio; The Center for Complexity in Providence, USA.Judah is also a visiting lecturer at Elisava school of design in Barcelona, Spain and Köln international school of design in Cologne, Germany.Judah is the founder of Public Service Design Practice, co-creating award winning initiatives that have been provid
Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.
- Episode Host: Stephen Wood
- Production Assistance: Jean Watanya
Welcome to another episode of Service Design. Yap. I'm your host, stephen Wood. As an industry, we seem to have been accelerating design with sprints and jams and hacks to help us tackle wicked problems at speed. But can this distilled design really help us to tackle society's mega-problems? In this episode, we talk with Judah Armani about creating the conditions that enable us to have a longer-form conversation about deep-seated social issues, to find answers that definitely won't fit on a post-it note. I'm joined today by Judah Armani, an educator who has been focusing on society-driven design. Hey, judah, how are you?
Judah Armani:I'm very well. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Stephen Wood:It was inevitable at some point. I think Everyone we've talked to and mentioned that we're having Judah Armani on the podcast. He's gone. Oh, I know, Judah, you seem to be one of the most connected people in service design.
Judah Armani:Well, that's really kind. I'm not sure it's entirely true, but I'll take it.
Stephen Wood:Take the compliment. We always start Service Design Yap with our quickfire round. So for you we've got four questions.
Judah Armani:Are you ready to begin?
Stephen Wood:Fantastic. So the first question really looks at your background. Was your background?
Judah Armani:design school, or was it more the school of life? It was design school.
Stephen Wood:And where did you study?
Judah Armani:At Martin.
Stephen Wood:Can you tell us the year?
Judah Armani:Oh yeah, it was in the early 90s, Mid-90s actually so.
Stephen Wood:Was that Hoban St Martin's?
Judah Armani:Yeah, yeah, or was that? Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Wood:Fantastic A building that is beautiful but has been basically empty ever since. It's incredible, Right.
Judah Armani:I walked past it the other day and I was like what's actually going on in here?
Stephen Wood:The thing is nothing, maybe a little bit of squatting, but even though there's been this sort of renaissance around things like the Blitz Club and what happened with the St Martin's kids and the punks and the intersection there, I thought potentially people would look at it and you've got such a lot of development around there. That's prime real estate and it's a beautiful building. It's a weird thing it hasn't been renovated there.
Judah Armani:We go, I'm surprised.
Stephen Wood:Awesome. So question two Do you believe in data-driven design or do you believe in the visionary dictating the direction of design?
Judah Armani:Can I say both?
Stephen Wood:Everyone says both. Yeah, why do you say both?
Judah Armani:Because we need the past and we need the future right Absolutely.
Stephen Wood:Yeah, absolutely. You need someone to try and interpret, but you also need to be able to pick up signals. Another background focus question what was your first job and what was your favorite job?
Judah Armani:First job, I think, was climbing into industrial. I guess they were pots, but you could walk around them for Heinz to make their beans and I was cleaning those. I'd have an all-in-one thing and I'd be cleaning them.
Stephen Wood:My favourite job is the one I'm doing now I would really like to go back to the bean cleaning.
Judah Armani:Who wouldn't?
Stephen Wood:What are the things that you took from bean cleaning?
Judah Armani:There was one guy I'm not going to lie, he took his cleaning very seriously. He had his standard Heinz issue sort of broom to like clean the back. He also had his own sort of handy kind of like smaller brush and I mean I was not a great employee but he was quite inspiring. I remember him. I only saw him like twice. Um, he would do the night shift so we would work through the night to get these massive sort that you could walk in and these pots clean whilst other pots were being used to like make beans and beans and sausages and all that kind of thing just industrialized scale. It was the first time I was genuinely challenged to think about how the stuff that we eat is made.
Stephen Wood:I think it's interesting that you've got someone who is a vocational beanpot cleaner to the extent that actually no, the tools that we've got aren't really fit for purpose. I can imagine a better tool and I've actually made it and I brought it in. I'm not sure whether that will be allowed today, but people are ingenious and inventive in many, many different dimensions. And how did you find night shifts?
Judah Armani:I mean it was fine then. I think I would struggle now, but at the time kind of operate as a youth, you operated with very little sleep. So, yeah, it was fine, it was. I remembered either driving there that I just passed my drunk license no, I couldn't have been, I was getting driven there and just this lovely thought of like there's not many people that are awake while I'm working, and certainly not that many people awake when I was coming back. And there's there's a twilight period, so up until sort of three, four in the morning, there's always like the potential people that have gone out to a party, and then from five onwards you get the early commuters, but from four to five is the no man's land, like no one really should be out in that hour, and that's just such a a great hour, like to take a tea break and just walk around outside of Heinz. It was just a bizarre moment.
Stephen Wood:Just observe all the different tribes coming out and for many people they're just invisible because your rhythms don't intersect. I also got a summer job. I was working in a toilet factory, working in the night shift, and I've never felt so ill in my life.
Judah Armani:Really.
Stephen Wood:And it made me yeah, absolutely it made me feel like I had flu and, of course, you know, I did some research. Oh yeah, this is pretty normal for people who are shifting their circadian rhythms. But there are people who have been in that job for years and years and it was just the way they engineered their, their home life. They'd engineered their professional life. But when you read the research, you find that longevity is impacted by perpetual night shifts. But, uh yeah, it's definitely not something that I'd want to do or could do. I, I like my beds too much. Judah, I like my bed well I think, don't we all?
Judah Armani:but also you raise a really interesting point, which is how much have we acclimatized to the shape of life designed by society and what would our normal patterns and cycles look like? I just find that fascinating, because all of our body clock, if you you will probably has as unique a ticking narrative to it as our lives are, but yet they're kind of forced and compressed into a more standardized pattern and just find that very interesting.
Stephen Wood:It's like the industrial mold. So what is life like before the industrial mold? Actually, just look at a teenage boy. Sleep patterns evolve as you age as well. So if you think about teenagers, they're most active at night. Their bodies and the hormonal systems within them make them more active at night, and so they want to lie in. So it's only when we try and project our social norms over it that they become lazy slugger beds, as opposed to people who are just reacting to their normal rhythms. And we never flip it, we never look at the other end of the age range. And you always remember? I worked at a supermarket and the people who were always queuing up at 7 am were the elderly, because their circadian rhythms had changed and you know, for them they were up with the luck. But, um, yeah, it's. It's one of those things that's, you know, fascinating. And whether you're making toilets or cleaning bean tins, there's always a really interesting aspect for the curious. You can always look at human behavior.
Judah Armani:You can bring a design mind to any job yeah, I wish, I wish I was that intelligent at the time or that mature. Unfortunately, my mind was full of teenage stuff that probably wasn't helpful well, yeah, we'll leave that one there.
Stephen Wood:We all know what you're talking about. Join us next week the teen mind of julioiamani. Yes, there we go. No, we will not go into those depths. So our last question we ask people to list their the favourite source that they always recommend. So what are the things that you always recommend to peers, to people you're mentoring, maybe to people in the pub? Is there one thing that you go? Yeah, I probably hub. Is there one thing that you get? Yeah, I probably handed that out more times than anything else.
Judah Armani:Probably a collection of things, maybe richard sennett's, the craftsman, arthur miller's crucible and then pt anderson's there will be blood would be a recommendation. And then there's probably a few others that are a bit more specific, but I think those three I mean. There was a period of time where I would just buy copies of the craftsman and the crucible light in fives and tens to hand out it's always good when you find something that really floats your boat.
Stephen Wood:You think, oh, someone else has to find out about this. Yeah, we were uh talking to, uh, another designer and we talked about, okay, what are the inspirational sources, uh, for him, and uh he said, oh, the count of monte cristo. I mean, oh, that's very interesting. That's because we weren't really thinking of that. Oh, yes, because everyone should know how to do revenge properly. It's like that's dark. There you go. Have you not thought about the design of everyday things or something like that? No, no, the count of monte cristo. It was really good. So your first book can you tell us a little bit about the craft-focused book?
Judah Armani:authors, where you know you read it and you're like man, is this written? For me is like. Is every word like singing in the way that like for everyone else is? It doesn't. The craftsman is. This snapshot senate is trying to connect with that which is in all of us the desire to make stuff and to make stuff well and to continue to make stuff well. And whilst the title of the book suggests that it is about people that have decided that their career pathway is going to lie in the world of craft, actually the book is for every human that makes things, and we all make things, whether we're making a relationship or making a sandwich, like we're all involved in the process of making.
Stephen Wood:And for those who want to be better at making, then you know the craftsman offers some valuable insight, and do you think that that's part of what it is to be a craftsperson the fact you're always looking to perfect practice, to explore new avenues whereas maybe, if you're not a craft focused person, this idea of having established a best practice and then turning the handle almost more of a mechanized approach is more dominant?
Judah Armani:not wanting to get like particularly preachy about it, but I think it feels like it's more of a human like. Somehow along the way, we all, I would hope, want to be better versions of ourselves, and the process of that means somehow having the space to be able to reflect on how we're doing and can we improve, and some of the attributes of the craftsman I think can absolutely be deployed for like everyday life of can I explore better ways of being?
Stephen Wood:it's a universal option. It's applied in varying degrees. I think many people definitely aren't. For myself, we're so focused on moving forward that getting an opportunity to reflect back and then to be critical and to improve based on that something you have to consciously make time for I mean, I think there's you're spot on.
Judah Armani:There should be an element of that that the onus is on the individual. We have our own choice and agency to be able to do that. But I think also a part of what we should be doing is opening further opportunities for others to speak into our life. Right like so that we've got streams from multiple directions that are allowing us to change or hopefully giving us the space to reflect on change, so that it's not all on our ability to have a reflective practice, but it's people we trust, people we love, that are able to speak into our lives and us into them.
Stephen Wood:Yeah, and also having that ability to listen as well. That's something that we have to learn. Awesome. I will avoid asking you if you were going to make a sandwich, what sandwich would you make, given your love of craft? That was an easy question, but we won't go there.
Judah Armani:I love how you skillfully navigated around that.
Stephen Wood:The sandwich question. Well, you also said that we've got relationships or sandwiches. Some relationships are sandwiches. We will have to balance things in our lives. Some of us are lucky, some of us are not. Beautiful, beautiful, I've got an idea. It's a hundred to one shot. So, judah, I know you've just published your book Society Driven Design. Can you tell me a little bit about why you wrote this book?
Judah Armani:Well, firstly, I think why anyone writes a book is partly to share what is important to them, and then the process of making yourself vulnerable to seeing if that thing that I thought was important to me is actually important to others, and being open for critique. Right, so it might not be as important as I thought it was to other people. Certainly, it's like the process of any art driven thing. It's like you do something because it expresses your philosophy of life, you do it because you feel it's important, and then you're open for the critique of it as well. Let yourself vulnerable to it. So there's some of the sort of like narratives behind it. Narratives behind it and it covers a small portion of my life, the last 20 years of of two decades worth of work, and then crystallizes it in one initiative that has lasted almost a decade and if we think about those formative experiences that were the 20 years of experience, is there a a story within that experience that comes out in the book that you'd like to take us through?
Stephen Wood:that will help us to understand your concepts of dialogue and social license I mean, if we're talking about dialogue, then for sure.
Judah Armani:But even before that there's some learning, maybe some hard learning that begins with our understanding of wanting to be open to change. Maybe the first decade where I worked in homelessness I believed that design had an answer or a place anyway to be able to be applied for some kind of social change. But that belief carried with it Maybe pockets in me that were impervious to change. And so the first chunk of the book is really exploring the phenomena of those of us who want to be involved in any kind of change within society change makers, entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, designers who knows who cares like there's a call that we need to be open to change ourselves. Right, because if we're impervious to that, then in a way we shouldn't really be getting involved in facilitating change for others if we don't want to see it in our own. So that's the sort of first bit around in the book. But to your point around dialogue, of course dialogue is around wanting to use. In the age of collaboration and co-creation that is quickly becoming as bankrupt a word as community, the need to want to do it meaningfully and want to do it well means that we have to use some of the oldest design tools known to man, which is language and conversation, and, moving away from, maybe, tools that might mystify people, those whom we're looking to collaborate with or co-design with or co-create with or co-whatever buzzword du jour is going to be used for some kind of meaningful connection of people, to create things and to to have the skill of designing conversations, to have the ability and the empathy to know that, before actually we're designing anything in life, we're designing conversations. Conversations often about endings, conversations about transitions, conversations about beginnings, and how we convene these spaces and hold these spaces is part of the skill of the designer to know where the appropriate space is, to be able to invite people in, to create that environment for those that maybe have not spoken before, to take the first few steps in speaking and to exercise choice and agency in a way that's going to make some kind of difference.
Judah Armani:And these conversations often need a vehicle to live in. And because we have something as inaccessible as time that we need to work with the lack of time on a project, the fact that we try and do a hack to solve homelessness in a day, or whatever it is challenging we set ourselves right Time, it becomes inaccessible to a group of stakeholders that aren't going to be boxed in in six workshops and a three-month project. There's the need for long-form conversations. So the social license is a way of legitimizing these long-form conversations over a period of time that other organizations could then dock into to say, ah, there's a social license going on with that community in Camden been going on for like three or four years. Let's dock into that and see whether there's some insights, learnings, trust, collaboration that can be deployed into something that will work.
Stephen Wood:And that really contrasts with when you go and run a design project. This idea of understanding what can be achieved in a specific time frame. How can we accelerate the outcomes? How do we, you know, do more with less? This idea of actually giving things time and space and not being reductivist. I love the fact you said we'll fix the homeless problem with one project. We all know that not the way the world works. But so many people step up to the plate with that kind of attitude that it kind of becomes the norm and that then sets the bar for others, as opposed to yeah, we've been dealing with this problem for decades, for generations, for centuries. We're not going to find a solution instantly you are spot on.
Judah Armani:It also opens up a whole new set of parameters as well. Like it's impossible, especially if we're talking about deploying some kind of a design initiative around challenging circumstances. We need to overcome things like trust and the paradox that trust has over collaboration. We can't really trust someone that we've never collaborated before, but in order to collaborate with someone, we need to trust them, and we're not going to get to the bottom of that conundrum in a three-month project, you know, in two workshops, in an interview or a questionnaire. Yeah, we need time yeah, doesn't exist.
Judah Armani:On a post-it note no it doesn't exist on a post, and because we have a time-based approach to productivity and business, when business touches design, we can be guilty of thinking well, this project, you know, if we throw enough people at it for the next six months, we can, you know, at least get to a place where others haven't got before. But the point is that we're unlikely to do that. If our source data is going to be the same, it will only be different if we are meaningfully collaborated and have been welcomed into the communities that we are looking to collaborate with. Then our source data will look different. But that takes time and it's only when the source data is different can we assume that we're going to create something different.
Stephen Wood:Absolutely, and you talked about creating the conditions for dialogue to happen. If you're going into communities and you're establishing trust, are there ways that you can create or foster those conditions?
Judah Armani:trust is notoriously difficult to design for right. But but to your point, there are conditions for trust that exist. So we can look at consistency, we can look at frequency, we can look at delivery on promises. So when we started working in prisons, for example actually we're talking about a community of people that had been let down so many times before, so their levels of trust was low, dare I say, in trust debt right, or trust poverty. So what they needed, or one of the things just purely to build the conditions for trust, is for someone to say something and then deliver it. Even if the thing that that person was going to say is I'm going to be here every day from eight to four, and then they happen to be there every day from eight to four.
Judah Armani:That is a micro way of delivering on a promise. Right, it's creating a tenant of trust, not trust itself, but at least something that someone can rely on. That also brings frequency and consistency to it. So it's not like I'm going to be here once a month or I'm going to be here once a year. The frequency and consistency is commensurate to the amount of trust debt that there is, and so, if you can see that there is a group of people that have been constantly let down. It probably needs more intervention of time, of more time that you carve out.
Stephen Wood:How do we create that consistency for those that have been devoid of trust in their relationships? That's going to be months rather than five minute workshop.
Judah Armani:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephen Wood:You talked about your work in prisons. I think it's a good time to touch on the story of in-house records. Where did the idea first come to you?
Judah Armani:the idea never came to me. It came to us as a group, um me and about 15 prisoners. The challenge came from can design contribute to reducing the offending? And from there I knocked on the doors of a bunch of prisons to say, hey, I'm a designer, I'd really like to see if I can contribute to reducing offending. At which point the answer was like see ya, and so I was like, maybe maybe me saying I'm a designer isn't particularly helpful in this scenario. Okay, um, so I just got in touch with some prison to say I'm an educator, I know I I can do that. I've been doing that well for, I guess, a lot of my life, and I'm willing to do that for free for you, if you've got any lessons that need teaching. And you know the response is different right, because I'm offering something potentially valuable and then using those sessions to create a cohort of people to explore how we might do education differently.
Judah Armani:So education in prisons is siloed. That's not a critique on prisons, it's just a carry-on from what we do in society. Anyway. We have numeracy lessons, we have literacy lessons, we have computer skills lessons. We've got who knows who cares what lessons, and they're siloed, they're portioned off. But the problem is that we've got 86,000 people in prison. Maybe 50% of them never finished school in the first place. So this way of transferring knowledge, this way of learning, if it never worked the first time around, why do we assume it's going to work when they're in jail?
Judah Armani:Part of what we explored with a group of guys was how do we get away from siloed learning to a lake of learning and a place where actually we can move quite freely in terms of the knowledge that's given, working with the guys, building trust, exploring aspirations, exploring ambitions and hopes and creativity Together. We arrived at music and a record label became the place where that lake of learning could take place. Numeracy and counting in beats in bars, in rhythm, literacy in writing beats in bars, in rhythm, literacy in writing songs, business plans and the role of a label meant that you could be an artist, an artist manager, a promoter, a musician, and also there was no stigma. It's one thing to leave the wing to go and do english and maths and education, which maybe isn't seen as cool. It's another thing to leave wing to go and be part of record label.
Stephen Wood:That has a different vibe you've got the kudos there and I wonder whether just the fact that there was such a concrete end point, it wasn't education for education's sake, it doesn't drive engagement, but where there is that actually I can see this is leading up to a specific thing. Maybe that's one way to position it, in a way that's more engaging.
Judah Armani:It's more concrete you are one million percent, spot on, although I know that it's impossible to be a million percent, but you are, you are totally back to the numeracy.
Judah Armani:Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks, man, I need to go on yourself, but you are totally right and actually you know what you just said also. Therefore, the dot dot dot of that is that we need to challenge do we believe that our current model for delivering education, for delivering knowledge transfer, is state-of-the-art? Do we believe that we learn by sitting down in a room and someone talking to us? Is that the crucible for knowledge exchange? Or do we believe it's different? And if it is different, then what does that look like?
Stephen Wood:Or is it different for different people as well, when we get back to the chestnut of the Ken Robinson TED lecture, where they said actually different people have different styles. You can have someone who's a dunce uh, formal learning when measured against one thing, but actually a genius when put into a different situation. It's like measuring a fish by its ability to climb a tree. It's the wrong thing well.
Judah Armani:Well, I mean, like when we're talking about children, there is a base level of curiosity that exists there and within each child there's the space for us to be able to like work relatively quickly to find where that curiosity lives at its heightened level. And from my very limited experience so I home educated all my children, but from that experience that I'm not never been a teacher in that sense, middle school or high school I think those guys do remarkable jobs. But from that base limited experience, there is the pursuit of where. Where does curiosity live? And therefore that's where I'm going to travel to, that's where the session is, the knowledge transfer is and the vehicles for that could be wide and varied and creative and imaginative, and the forum for that could be also creative, imaginative. You know socrates or you know plato through socrates and did a lot of the teaching walking, because that physical movement of your body going forward also connected with the mind moving forward, right? So who's to say sitting down in a classroom is even the best format for anyone to transfer knowledge.
Stephen Wood:It's the best format to control people and control a large audience. I just remember the scene in Ferris Bueller with the people drooling onto their desks and literally it looked like they were sedated by the teacher.
Judah Armani:Bueller, bueller, bueller.
Stephen Wood:Voodoo economics. We can all remember voodoo economics just because of that fantastic film. So you've started to engage with folks in prison. You identified that for them a great end point would be a record label. It's got you know potential economic impacts. There's a job at the end of it. It doesn't have the stigma of going back to school. It's relatively cool. How did you get people engaged the first time that you ran in-house records?
Judah Armani:That's easy. We already collaborated with 15 people. By the time we were ready to like make it go live, we were 300% oversubscribed, like just the word got around to that jail, which is like there's a record label going Cool. Well, what's the criteria? I know I guess you just got to be interested in it, I'm interested in it, and so we had more people than we knew how to cater for, which was a challenge, but I guess not surprising, right, when the opposite is true for education providers in prison, some of the big education providers that do all the maths and English, and they're struggling to get like eight people, nine people from a prison of a thousand, and they're struggling to get like, you know, eight people, nine people from a prison of a thousand. They're struggling to get nine people to rock up to maths. And you know we've got a waiting list of 150 and we're brimmed to the full of 20 in a session. Like finding that engagement level was never, has never been like the challenge for us.
Stephen Wood:And where did you find the funding? Because I know we've looked at design in state schools and funding for design in state schools is dropping off To actually find funding for in-prison education. Was that more difficult or was there a direct route to funding what?
Judah Armani:was difficult was working out whether it should be a charitable initiative or a business. That difficulty lasted about three minutes, partly because, going back to the point of trust and consistency, we can't say to someone we're going to be here next year, someone that's got a four or five-year custodial sentence. We can't say we're going to be here throughout your whole custodial sentence if we're a charity, because we're going to spend half our year fundraising. So I was very curious as to the designer element here. The designer should be curious about how do the current education streams work in prison Prisons, commission education. They have education contracts to deliver numeracy and literacy and computer skills and who knows who cares what skills.
Judah Armani:And I felt the the smartest way of going about this was to say right, we want to be an education provider. Therefore we're able to draw down on commission funding for our services that we're going to deliver as staff. So in-house now has 21 staff, delivers educational contracts across the UK prisons and whilst we're not the big boy education providers that eat up the multi-million pound contracts for delivering maps in English in like UK prisons, we sort of feed off the tiny scraps but still are able to do so to wash our face and then whatever profit is left over. We support guys on the outside because we're through the gates. So not only do they get to like work with in-house in jail, when they leave jail they're able to continue going to studio in London or in Brighton working with in-house staff.
Stephen Wood:And you've mentioned, when you started you were looking at how you could engage with people who were in prison so you could reduce the re-offending rate. Is that something that you've tracked for the people that have been through the in-house program?
Judah Armani:Yeah, we've tracked it and we've watched it through Nesta From those who we've tracked that continue to work with us. After release there's less than 1% reoffending rate.
Stephen Wood:And how does that compare with the national average?
Judah Armani:64% were flaming right.
Stephen Wood:Okay, and how many people have been through the program?
Judah Armani:On the outside that have been connected with us just under a thousand in total that we have in TREK. There's lots of reasons why people won't continue with this. Out of prison there's probably about 3000 people that have gone through in-house. For some people when they leave jail in-house. For some people, when they leave jail in-house represents a time that they were in jail and there's no reason for them to continue with us on the outside right, and I totally get that.
Judah Armani:For other people they want to continue and see in-house as a way of developing music and that's great. For others, a different archetype. In-house has a social connection. Studio is a safe place where they can do their housing benefit forms or maybe even meet probation or maybe right in studio there's been deemed as a contact center so guys can meet their kids there. Especially guys that might be living in quite chaotic circumstances and situations but still want to maintain relationships with their children come to studio because that's a safe place fantastic, and have you seen any folks go through the program and actually come back and become members of staff?
Stephen Wood:yeah, there'll be seven of those for 21 people that come through the course they've actually seen the benefit it brings to their life and they're keen to spread it to others. That's a fantastic story. I was really interested to look at the numbers because when you see the difference between 65 re-offending if you go the traditional path versus one but then you look, actually this is at scale are many people coming to you and asking you for advice about how we reshape the in prison curriculum as a whole?
Judah Armani:not yet. But I think that, partly because remember we were talking about currently prison education system is still siloed and because that is the model which feels the easiest to be able to mitigate risk for and prison is also about mitigating risk In-house is a much more open space of learning. It's more work for the educator, so you can't just have a maths educator. You know you need to be more flexible, but dare I say that's the whole point of education is that you are flexible to the needs of the learner. You're there in service of them, in support of their learning journey, not necessarily to just do the bit that you know and then get out of there, but to say, actually, how can I create the environment for this person to engage with knowledge and then feel good about that knowledge and then to build on that?
Stephen Wood:that's the second time we've touched on this idea of how do we foster the conditions. It's one of the core elements of designing. How do we design for an outcome?
Judah Armani:well, we have to have the right conditions to foster that, especially when we're dealing with humans and those conditions will be formed and informed by the challenging experiences of the humans that we're collaborating with. There will be some universal elements like trust, like safety. For sure you need those conditions, those dimensions, if you like, but then there'll be other things that are nuanced and unique to that group that we are working with, and the more that we understand that group, the more that will form and inform the conditions that we need to create in order to hold that space in a good place.
Stephen Wood:And how do you learn about those conditions?
Judah Armani:I think that maybe that's a trite answer. I don't mean it like that. I wasn't born in England. I was born in Tehran and came to England when I was quite young but grew up maybe in a less kind London that didn't necessarily warm to people that were foreign and certainly not warm to people that were foreign and from the Middle East.
Judah Armani:You get to experience the language of loss and the language of outsider quite quickly, but you also want to learn the language of loss and the language of outsider quite quickly. But you also want to learn the language of society and the language of acceptance and before you know it, as a kid you can speak many languages and I don't think that is a unique experience to children growing up. I think in whatever circumstance and whatever our backgrounds from affluence to quite challenging we will have all had experience of the language of the outsider. There'll always been environments where we will be on the outside of what that micro society or the wider society are experiencing and they almost are giving us an understanding of the vowels and the consonants that that language requires. Now, as we grow older, our pursuit is often to be accepted within the main core of society, but the differentiation of the designer is to never forget those languages and be able to use them in a way that is going to benefit wider society.
Stephen Wood:Again we come back to this idea of looking at children and looking at how they embrace language. They've got a clear understanding of. Let's look at the language of the Orthodox. How do I express myself? It could be accent, it could be dialect, it could be vocabulary. It can easily, easily switch On my commute into London as we pass through the home counties. It's really interesting to see how accents change when their teens are talking to their friends and as soon as their parents phone. It's a code shifting thing.
Judah Armani:But again it shows that there's this view of understanding the cachet and the doors that are opened Weirdly yeah, the reason I'm chuckling is because I remember, oh my goodness, a few years ago I was meeting one of our graduates from in-house on the train in london. They're coming down to brighton for the day and we were talking on the train and as we got closer towards brighton, a couple of young people got young people yes and um shake your cane, you know they were.
Judah Armani:They were brighton. They were brighton boys. They were well dressed. They were probably just, you know, come from having quiche at home and they were talking in a particular way that would make you think they are not from bright. It would make you think that they were from, you know, like maybe a more tougher council estate. And the guy that I was with that I met, he just looked at me and he was like I don't get it. He was like my whole life I don't want to sound like the way I sound. And here are these kids behind me that are sounding the way I sound and I would give anything to sound how they really sound, but they're choosing not to sound like that. They're choosing to sound like me because somehow they think that has more cachet to it.
Stephen Wood:There we go, the Guy Ritchie quotient.
Judah Armani:Yeah.
Stephen Wood:Definitely there. Yeah, we can adopt the mockney or the fake yardie lingo. It shows an understanding, but it also reflects the fact that you've got the right to do both, and it's like oh.
Stephen Wood:And there's a lot of talk of cultural appropriation. But yeah, you know, in some situations, done on the wrong train, the kids will be really glad they're wearing trainers so they can run. It's like, oh, come on To thine own self, be true, I've got an idea. It's a hundred to one shot. We've talked a little bit about through the gate services and how in-house is something that isn't just there, through the custodial part of the service. Did you design the journey that happens as you go through the gate in a different way to the journey that happens in prison?
Judah Armani:Well, yeah, there are some caveats, though, where all of in-house is really formed and informed by the experiences of the humans involved, and so there were some easier things about delivering in custody and harder things about delivering in the community, about delivering in custody and harder things about delivering in the community. In the custody, people are always there when they need to be there because it's a locked environment. In the community, there is a whole range of other things that will have people's attention, so we needed to create a more flexible, softer space as opposed to kind of a regime, because we were forced to work with the regime. We didn't set the regime out of prison. We needed to be, you know, mindful of that. There are a range of other things that are going to be demanding the time of our guys, and so we needed to have an environment that had more flexibility and then a lot more choice and agency.
Judah Armani:You know we do gigs on a regular basis, but certainly not me or any of the staff put that on.
Judah Armani:That's all the graduates, the guys that come from prison. I'd say accountability, but really it's about agency to be able to shape the way that they want to share music and also, what's really important with the stuff that goes on on the outside is there's an inseparable quality between staff, volunteers and graduates, which means that in-house gigs are in-house gigs in terms of the philosophy of in-house prison. It might mean that half the people there have an allegiance and believe in what in-house is doing and have never been to prison, but they also play music and perform. The point is is that you're meant to go to in-house gig and just not know, because it's not important, who's on stage that went to prison, who isn't on stage to went to prison. So there's this inseparable quality. On the outside is very different to you know, the quality of geeks in prison on the inside, because it's just the guys in prison that are performing. So I think there are some interesting deviations in terms of touch points on the outside.
Stephen Wood:We've touched on in-house records, which is a fantastic story. It's great to see how an idea has blossomed and you've worked with a community that doesn't often get to participate in co-design and you've helped us to understand how trust building is that first foundation and after you've done that, actually a lot of the ideas and the agency and the design happens in that community itself. If you're approaching the project again today, is there anything you'd do differently?
Judah Armani:That's a really good question has anything changed in the justice system.
Stephen Wood:That means actually think doors are shut or doors are open for a project.
Judah Armani:I don't know about that element because I haven't tried to start something within the custodial world for some time, so I'm not sure what those challenges might be now. But to the first point, is there anything I'd do differently? Yeah, I think I would have. I would have probably tried to explore the project with another designer. I think I naively went into it on my own and it really stretched me. It was just me for about a year and a half.
Judah Armani:So I was convening, facilitating, doing the kind of sessions, and then, as it became a thing, I was grabbing a notebook, grabbing a guitar and running the sessions and delivering it quite every day, leaving, you know, waking up at half four or five in in the morning, driving down to the prison on the Isle of Sheffield, and then, when it got a little bit of success and the next prison down the road wanted it, I would do three days in one prison, two days in another, and I was just exhausted for a year and a half.
Judah Armani:And and because I like making things and I like making things with people and I like making things quickly with people, so that we can understand there was a lot of it that was just embodied knowledge and it was very difficult to get other people on board. I could get staff on board because eventually the prisons were like wait, we should pay for this, but staff was different to someone to design with, and so I think I would probably do it with another person, because it really exhausted me with my reflection and we often hear that some designers uh, pack animals.
Stephen Wood:So they're really social. They always work together. Everyone loves being in a studio environment. Everyone hated being in lockdown. So to be on your own for a year even the zeal of the purpose, because clearly you're really passionate about this and we're ultra passionate at the very beginning as well. Even with that, the fact you don't have someone to bounce ideas off and, as you say, to share the load with that must have been really difficult, but that's a fantastic point for anyone who's considering launching a purposeful enterprise. Up front, you talked about turning it into a business and prison saying, well, maybe we should pay for this. Would it have been easier to get someone to collaborate with on the design phase if you'd have had that funding from the beginning?
Judah Armani:Oh, no, no, no. I think there are some environments where creativity comes from squeeze, and I think it's important to embrace those environments, and this one was very much one of those. So I purposefully didn't even try and get my time covered, because I knew that not doing so would unlock another layer of creativity, and that's what I was really keen to find not in a in a martyr way, but like in a purely I know what this is like. I've been in these scenarios before, and I've been in these scenarios where there has been funding, and I've been in these scenarios where there hasn't been funding, and my experience is the funding actually rarely makes it better yeah, constraints encourage stretch.
Stephen Wood:Stretch means you look at different ways of problem solving or even thinking about potential solution avenues. But again, yeah, you've also got to think about exhaustion as well. Yeah, and then it comes down to scoping. So how do we make sure that we're not trying to boil the ocean? That's awesome. If we think about society driven design your new book are there any elements of that that you'd like to talk about that maybe we haven't touched on?
Judah Armani:No, I think we have. You've navigated it carefully and beautifully. The beginning section is the need for the designer to understand what design means to them and what their practice looks like. We articulate about that. The second chunk is about how we design conversations meaningfully. The second chunk is about how we design conversations meaningfully. Chomsky talks about actually language as a way of communicating in the most highest fidelity of form. And then the last section is putting that all together and exploring in-house as a case study. So you know, hey, you probably don't need to buy it because you've heard it all now.
Stephen Wood:I know it's also a beautiful book as well. So as someone who's already hiding books on design in in his house uh, that will definitely be another one I'll need to find a hiding place for. As we come to the end of the podcast, I just want to reflect. You've talked about building trust and trust as being the foundation for successful collaborative co-design. You've talked about the elements of consistency and dependability being there in trust, but you also talked about approaching prisons and first saying, well, I'm a designer and getting rejected, and then saying I'm an educator and getting accepted. If we think about the trust equation, the thing that's on the bottom of that equation is self-interest, and I do wonder, as a designer, do people see designers coming in to observe, to take out, or educators of people that come into an organization to give back? So could that also be factored into some of that trust equation?
Judah Armani:That's a really interesting point. I find the term designer to be problematic in a lot of scenarios, not just within criminal justice system, because the definition and interpretation of it varies so much and if one introduces themselves as a designer, they might have to spend the next three months having to reinterpret what that means to the audience. So they're just like engaged. So there are some instances where it's helpful, usually when you are able to do what you want to do and not be questioned, but most of the time and that has a value. That has a value in certain set the visionary yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know you can.
Judah Armani:You can then play with uniform, you know you can dress differently, you can dress in a way that you know that that industry doesn't dress purely just to disarm and to come in with a way of like, being able to like, create, uh, positive sort of friction. But to your point, I think there's something kind of beautiful and humble and ordinary in in terms of everyday sense of the role of the educator. That I think is phenomenal. And nick de leon, who set up the service design program rca, often talks about educators, animators, you know, people that will animate others. I think there's something beautiful about the role of an educator, a craft of the educator that feels not threatening to people and sometimes it might feel a little bit like what is an educator going to give, but most of the time it feels like, oh, what harm would an educator do? And is there a difference between an educator going to give, but most of the time it feels like, oh, what aren't?
Stephen Wood:and is there a difference between an educator and a teacher?
Judah Armani:I don't, maybe, uh, maybe, I mean, I don't that that's, that's um something for, like you know, smart, that's like you need to be able to pull apart, and I think that's definitely something for the second daiquiri yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, I don't know like there's something about the phrase teacher, doesn't? It hits like a pain point in me, maybe because of experiences of teachers, I don't know, there are echoes from the past that come through with this idea of teachers.
Stephen Wood:But I think it's quite american to talk about educators and I I'm with you. I think that people who are going to be crafting, the people that craft the world of the future, are going to be in the education sector and anything that helps to build the kudos of actually making that move to going and teaching. That's a great thing. In the UK we've gone through successive rounds of moving teaching from almost the profession so at one point you could get your passport signed by a teacher not anymore. So, yeah, it's obviously no, you can. It has to be a policeman or a lawyer or a doctor, someone in a respective profession, and I think that's really telling. And I know so many people who've gone into teaching who are absolutely inspirational and are the people that are going to create waves in the world, much in the way that you guys have done with in-house records.
Judah Armani:I think that's a really interesting observation about the erosion of the profession of teaching. I think it's worthy of like more thought, I think maybe a third daiquiri.
Stephen Wood:And on that really happy note, well, we got pensive. We got pensive in the end. So we started off talking about cleaning bean pans and uh, sitting on toilet pans on the night shift, through to understanding how we design with communities, talking about records, talking about language and how it excludes and includes, and we've ended up talking about teaching and back to daiquiris. It's a fantastic virtual circle. Anything that takes us back to a daiquiri is a good thing.
Judah Armani:In my book, how wonderfully you have hosted and I know that of course you're going to host it wonderfully because you're running a successful podcast, but still it's. It's always nice to see those hallmarks in real life and the way you've carefully navigated this. I agree with your summary thank you very much.
Stephen Wood:It's good to show that I've been listening. To be honest, I know know Gene is often slightly dubious about whether I've nodded off or not.
Judah Armani:But no.
Stephen Wood:I'm old, but I'm not that old, jude. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for carving out time to speak to us and we look forward to reading your book in full. Come on, thank you. I've got an idea. It's a hundred to one shot. I've got an idea. It's a hundred to one shot. I've got an idea. Service Design Yap is a production from STN UK. It's presented by me, stephen Wood, with production assistance from Gina Wotania and music by Daka Sands. This episode has been edited by Ed Lush. Thanks, ed. Oh darling, this trip's an inspiration. I'm just saying it has happened.
Judah Armani:No no, I appreciate that. Last thing I want is anyone sneezing over a profound moment.
Stephen Wood:Yeah, but there we go. Some of my best work gets sneezed over, but there we go.
